America's Deep, Dark Secret
by MikeGeneThe Fernald School is the oldest institution of its kind in the country. At its peak, some 2,500 people were confined here, most of them children. All of them were called feeble-minded, whether they were or not.
The people who ran Fernald back in the bad, old days are no longer alive, but many of the victims still are — victims like Fred Boyce, who was locked up there for 11 years. He came back to Fernald with Correspondent Bob Simon.
"We thought for a long time that we belonged there, that we were not part of the species. We thought we were some kind of, you know, people that wasn't supposed to be born," says Boyce.
And that was precisely the idea.
The Fernald School, and others like it, was part of a popular American movement in the early 20th century called the Eugenics movement. The idea was to separate people considered to be genetically inferior from the rest of society, to prevent them from reproducing.
Eugenics is usually associated with Nazi Germany, but in fact, it started in America. Not only that, it continued here long after Hitler's Germany was in ruins.
January 22nd, 2007 at 1:47 am
Comment by bFast — January 22, 2007 @ 1:47 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:40 am
Amazing. No mention of our biggest eugenics movement– now known as "planned parenthood."
Wait, we're supposed to like them….
Comment by Foxfier — January 22, 2007 @ 3:40 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:32 am
I think this needs to be brought to light, as a warning against the widespread inclination to trust all scientists (especially those at renowned institutions):
Comment by Douglas — January 22, 2007 @ 5:32 am
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Foxfier, can you say "voluntary" and "consent" Can you understand what those words mean? Does that perhaps shed any light on some differences between Planned Parenthood and the Fernald School?
Comment by grendelkhan — January 22, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:08 pm
grendelkhan, words like "voluntary" and "consent" are only applicable to eugenics if the promoters can manage to convince entire populations to either reproduce in greater quantity than they usually do, or to severely limit or prevent their reproductive proclivities.
All definitions of the word "eugenics" speak of the purpose of "improving the species." Whatever species is the subject, most notably the human species. So long as the New Eugenics is about designer babies for the rich and voluntary birth control for the poor, there will be no measurable long term effects on human demographics or the general human gene pool.
IOW, a few rich couples may decide to reproduce by genetically engineered zygotes or custom clones. Ending up with the same one or two offspring they could have produced (cheaper) the old fashioned way. Better status symbology, that's all. Meanwhile, the poor dirt farmers in the second or third world will never have access to designer technology, and will continue to reproduce at the usual rate via regular, ordinary gene-shuffling. Demographics wins – the species remains as diverse as it's ever been.
IOW, it's not eugenics unless certain populations can be made to reproduce more than they normally would, and other populations can be made not to reproduce as they normally would. Individual reproductive choice is not eugenics, as it is not purposed to "improve the species" by selective breeding.
Comment by Joy — January 22, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Grendelkhan– so, the kids whose parents volintarily consented to send them to the institute in the story are alright? I doubt you mean that.
Main differance I see is that the kids in the Fernald school can look back and say "what kind of life might I have had?"
Comment by Foxfier — January 22, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Joy, I think you're misreading me. My point was that while people voluntarily go to Planned Parenthood and consent to whatever procedures they may undergo, the imprisonment of people in the eugenics program was involuntary, and the experiments (radioactive oatmeal, for instance, as noted above) were not performed with the consent of the subjects. I made this point to counter Foxfier's claim that Planned Parenthood was a eugenics organization in the same vein as the Fernald School. I thought this was obvious; I'll try to be clearer.
Foxfier, I'm telling you that your comparison of Planned Parenthood and the Fernald School is invalid because Planned Parenthood isn't whisking people off the street and feeding them radioactive oatmeal. Can you really not see the difference?
Comment by grendelkhan — January 22, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 4:41 pm
grendelkhan:
Ah, so. Thanks for the clarification. I agree that Planned Parenthood isn't analogous to Fernald and other institutions used by the state to practice negative eugenics back in the day when the US served as a role model for Hitler.
There has been an "influence" issue present on the medical end of reproductive choice for as long as I can remember, but it doesn't qualify as coercion. So long as it doesn't qualify as coercion it's not negative eugenics. Or even eugenics at all if the influence isn't aimed at "improving the species."
Comment by Joy — January 22, 2007 @ 4:41 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
grendelkhan,
You're right. Instead, they are butchering and murdering them.
Comment by Douglas — January 22, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Douglas, if you truly believe that a blastocyst is morally equivalent to a (let's say) four year old boy, then they are indeed butchering and murdering them, and an evil larger than the Nazi Holocaust is going on. Furthermore, abortion bans must be absolute–mothers must not be protected from the consequences any more than they would be if they hired a hitman to kill their child, there must be no exceptions for rape and incest, and clinic bombers are heroes who deserve monuments. Also, women should be prohibited from having sex while breastfeeding, as it causes implantation failures, which are murderous from that point of view. You also might want to look into picketing IVF clinics, as they create gobs of embryos that are thrown away. Also, comprehensive provision of contraceptives to everyone who wants them is likely to reduce the demand for abortion, and so might be morally required. (I haven't done the requisite legwork, but you might want to look into it.) I'm not, of course, telling you what to do; I'm just offering a few helpful hints.
On the other hand, if one doesn't believe that, then they're not butchering and murdering people. The law seems to lean that way at the moment. But it really depends on what your foundational beliefs are, which is why people really can't agree on this sort of thing, ever.
Comment by grendelkhan — January 22, 2007 @ 6:48 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:57 pm
How about the kids that are older than premies?
I don't care for the murder, killing, feeding radioactive oatmeal, etc of any human.
Oh, and the story doesn't mention anyone being "whisked away". They were put there by their legal guardians— be they parents or the state.
Look into the founder of PP before you start making broad statements, please.
I find it amusing that you seem to see no difference between purposely killing a child and miscarrage.
Comment by Foxfier — January 22, 2007 @ 7:57 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:10 pm
grendelkhan, the you covered the related issues to abortion quite well. I would modify your position slightly, however. Though "there must be no exceptions for rape and incest", there still is room for the exception where the life of the mother is in serous jeopardy. This would be covered under "self-defense". As far as, "clinic bombers are heroes who deserve monuments", well, when the clinics that get blown up contain people, this would definitely not be the case. You can't solve the problem of murder with murder. "You also might want to look into picketing IVF clinics, as they create gobs of embryos that are thrown away." Yup. "Also, comprehensive provision of contraceptives to everyone who wants them is likely to reduce the demand for abortion, and so might be morally required." Let me suggest that there is a much less expensive and effective form of birth control than contraceptives. Its a little word called "no". As an active right to lifer, let me say that I am wholeheartedly pro preconception choice.
The view you described is not at all far from the view held by the right to life, pro-life, anti-abortion community. Little babies are little babies, no matter how little they are. They deserve the protection of society.
Comment by bFast — January 22, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 8:27 pm
grendelkhan,
Oh, I'm sorry. I must have been mistaken. I was under the impression that abortions occurred all the way up to the moment before birth, and that Planned Parenthood performs, or at least plans, abortions at any stage. My bad.
Comment by Douglas — January 22, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Foxfier, I could say plenty of bad things about the racism of the pre-Civil Rights Democratic Party, but there have been splits, purges and leadership changes since then. I think it's more apropos to judge an organization in the present, as opposed to judging it by its founders. I mean, how much blame are you willing to lay on the current United States, given that it was founded by slavers?
Douglas, are you okay with abortion of, say, week-old fetuses? If so, mea culpa. I made the assumption that you drew the line at conception, but if you draw it elsewhere, then I'd be more than happy to edit my response to correspond to your actual viewpoint. I assumed the "life begins at conception" viewpoint because it's quite common, and because there are irresistably hilarious consequences that follow from it.
Comment by grendelkhan — January 22, 2007 @ 11:05 pm
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
When they're still killing small children? That's not much of a change. I'm still against them, and am working within the system to make it so that we don't keep doing the same, stupid, human mistake of "oh, that human isn't a person."
Comment by Foxfier — January 22, 2007 @ 11:08 pm
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:20 am
Lets hear them, please.
Comment by inunison — January 23, 2007 @ 4:20 am
January 23rd, 2007 at 4:42 am
Oh my God this is the saddest story I've heard in a long time.
Comment by chunkdz — January 23, 2007 @ 4:42 am
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:55 am
grendalkhan,
Life begins at conception. There is no other logical possibility. To assume otherwise is to run headlong down an entirely subjective, dangerous, path.
No.
Yes, it is morally equivalent, in the sense it is just as much a human being. In another sense, it is not equivalent, because it cannot yet feel pain.
Comment by Douglas — January 23, 2007 @ 5:55 am
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:42 pm
By all means. First, though you haven't mentioned it, I've heard the argument that life derives from the creation of a new, unique genetic identity at the moment of conception (this is usually connected with the word "ensoulment"). (If you don't hold this view, go ahead and skip this part.) By this logic, identical twins are one person (soul-wise), genetic chimaeras are two people, and a set of siamese twins with one head and four legs is the same number of people as a set of siamese twins with two heads and two legs, which is pretty counterintuitive. However any arguments against this would have to touch on the formation of a brain, a body, and so forth, and if humanity is dependent on those things, then blastocysts aren't human beings.
There's also the case of anencephaly, which causes the forebrain (including the cerebrum) to be absent; infection almost invariably sets in due to the brain being exposed, and consciousness is impossible; if the infant wasn't stillborn, it dies within a few hours, or a few days at most. Upon learning that they are carring an anencephalic fetus, nineteen out of twenty women get an abortion rather than give birth to a dead or dying infant. In the "life, nay, humanity begins at conception" view, this is, of course, murder. The odd thing, of course, is that if it's okay to abort an anencephalic fetus (which, of course, it isn't under the "humanity begins at conception" rule), then it's okay to abort a four-week fetus of any kind.
Anencephaly isn't a case of something appearing then disappearing; if an anencephalic fetus isn't fully human, then it never was, and was abortable at any point. However, there's no difference between an anencephalic fetus and a normal one up to around the fourth week of pregnancy, which is when the neural tube either closes or doesn't. So one pretty much leads to the other, from a moral standpoint; therefore, it's morally right and required to make women give birth to dead or dying offspring, because they're exactly as human as the rest of us. (No, I don't consider this particular consequence hilarious; the whole subject is depressing.)
Also, for instance, the human uterus is an unthinkable abattoir, given that the majority of fertilized eggs fail to implant in the uterine wall. From that perspective, most people are never born or even grown; they're usually excreted without anyone noticing it. This is, from that viewpoint, a history of mass murder bigger than abortion, yet no one's lifted a finger to raise the implantation rate and save all these little souls. At the very least, someone should be crying out against the practice of delaying fertility by extended breastfeeding, as it works partly by preventing implantation.
I've already pointed out the curious lack of protest against IVF facilities which create and discard scads of embryos. Furthermore, based on the "humanity begins at conception" viewpoint, a power failure or a fire at an IVF clinic in which thousands of embryos are destroyed is an instance of mass murder. I'm sure I've seen this hypothetical before, but in case there's a five year old boy at one end of the flaming IVF clinic and a freezer tank containing ten thousand embryos at the other end, and you can only save one, you're morally obligated to save the embryos.
I've already mentioned contraception as well; one can use Belgium and the Netherlands as examples of a countries with the lowest abortion rates in the civilized world, achieved in part by making contraception as available as possible. If one were truly interested in lowering the abortion rate, one would look into lowering the unplanned pregnancy rate. Heck, it's immoral not to do so. (After all, the most common reason women have abortions is simply because they're pregnant and don't want to be. The reasons for not wanting to be pregnant are quite varied, but they're not the point here.)
Comment by grendelkhan — January 23, 2007 @ 12:42 pm
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Grendelkhan, let me just address your IVF clinic charges. The right to life community absolutely opposes the IVF practice of making multiple embrios, and implanting a few. Those who respect life from conception have responded to their own inability to have children by means other than IVF in a number of ways:
1 – They have chosen to only fertilize eggs that they are prepared to carry. I believe, for instance that one of the recent headline making multiples (septuplits I believe) was the product of a family with this philosophical approach.
2 – They have "adopted out" their unused embrios. Did you know that this practice exists?
3 – I personally had to face this question. My wife and I could not have children the old fashioned way. We chose to do nothing. 'Turns out a family that we knew ended up with a child that the mother could not raise. We are now proud adoptive parents.
The freezing or disposing of embrios as a byproduct of IVF is as wrong as any other early-term abortion — period.
Comment by bFast — January 23, 2007 @ 1:25 pm
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:23 pm
grendelkhan:
You should probably avoid the detailed analysis of this subject, since you're in way over your head. Of course human life begins at conception. It may end shortly thereafter for any number of reasons, and often the Mom doesn't even know she was ever pregnant. It can end at any point along the way to birth, and can end at any point after that too. If human life begins, it always ends.
So when you say that any human being at any point "isn't fully human," you're making a value judgment without a basis either in biology or in spirituality. Such arbitrary justifications of murder are ambiguous and always aimed to interfere with somebody else's body and life choices.
I for one will welcome the day that men get out of the business of regulating the fertility of women. Of course, they only THINK they have that power in the first place, since women have been regulating their own fertility ever since women have roamed the earth as fertile life-conduits. I can take you on a hike up the mountain (past several semi-permanent camps the natives once used for hunting and religious ceremonies), and point out at least half a dozen abundant plants that served native women for a thousand years and more as means of birth control. These would be the same plants deer, bears and other critters use for the same purpose of preventing out-season births that will compromise the ability of the already-born to survive.
Life begins at conception and ends sometime later (a variable). Viability is the proper cut-off for Mom's convenience option in the modern world, and late-term interventions to save the mother's life need never involve murder of an otherwise viable infant. We have the cesarian option. The state has an anti-murder/infanticide interest it can legitimately impose, and lots of able citizens eager to take in someone else's throw-aways.
The state has no legitimate interest in casually-conceived zygotes and no business inserting itself until viability. If you can't abide the consequences of sex, don't have sex. Which is designed to enable conception, after all. Beyond that it's nobody's business.
Comment by Joy — January 23, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Actually, Patrick Lee and Robert P. George have argued pretty well for the case that human life begins at conception based on philosophical and scientific grounds. Here are a few articles by them.
Comment by thechristiancynic — January 23, 2007 @ 3:32 pm
January 24th, 2007 at 12:29 am
Nicely said, Joy. By his logic, I should be allowed to kill anyone without a problem– because we will *all* die, and if you're opposed to my knifing someone, you should also be opposed to every other sort of death.
Comment by Foxfier — January 24, 2007 @ 12:29 am
January 24th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
grendelkhan, you're acting as if only the "life at conception" position suffers from contradictions and difficult implications, but the same is true of any other. For example, if we switch as the defining event to the other bright line of gestation, birth, we get things like the sickening legalism of partial-birth abortion, in which what otherwise would be infanticide gets a free pass thanks to the fact that the child is killed just before its head emerges from the birth canal.
Or take the popular statement that "human life begins at the end of the second trimester when the fetus starts to give an EEG, which proves that consciousness is present." Provided that's even true, it begs a long line of questions. What is consciousness to begin with? Is an EEG signal an appropriate measure of it? What signal types, and of what intensity? Does every organism with a similar signal have "consciousness," and if so, do they have "humanity" Does it make sense to act as if the fetus goes from no-consciousness to consciousness in an instant according to the calendar, or is it a gradual process? And so on.
As for that scenario much beloved of "embryo disparagers" everywhere, "Fire in the IVF lab — kid or Petri dish?", it's hardly the devastating problem it's billed as. We are dealing with a hopelessly artificial and improbable triage situation, which is no legitimate basis for determining moral principles. As triage, it involves having to make pragmatic, split-second decisions based on most certain payoffs of limited action, not calm, leisurely moral reasoning. The five-year-old boy is there — tangible, full, stable, biologically independent, having a likely future –whereas the embryos are unseen, and God only knowing what their ultimate fates would be. (A few may be injected into a womb, with a smaller number actually implanting and fewer still surviving the gauntlet of "selective reduction" by abortion; some will be destroyed for being "unfit"; others will be subjected to destructive embryonic research; many will simply remain in indefinite deep freeze until eventually thrown away.) If in such a case I grab the five-year-old, that action says nothing meaningful about my thoughts on the moral value of the embryos, just as choosing to help the less-wounded patient says nothing about the moral value of human beings in general.
Comment by Varenius — January 24, 2007 @ 8:37 pm